Archive for October, 2007

Well, I think it’s time to explain the name of this blog. It is Spanish for “Do you like to read?” While appropriate for a blog just like that, the backstory comes from my mission in Spain. I served in a district with a senior missionary, Elder Proctor, and his wife. Elder Proctor was around 70 years old or so, and had never learned Spanish in his life. While his wife at least tried to learn some basics in order to communicate with the people of Spain, Elder Proctor never even attempted to do so. Instead, he wrote out an entire sales pitch for the Book of Mormon (he started his professional life out as a door-to-door vacuum salesman) and had another missionary translate it into Spanish, which he then memorized. Unfortunately, he memorized the written form, and consequently didn’t know how to pronounce anything in Spanish very well, so he had an absolutely horrendous accent. So whenever I went out to do street contacts with this man, he’d just brazenly walk up to anybody and rattle off this whole sales pitch regarding the Book of Mormon. Most of the time on my mission when we’d try to talk to Spaniards they’d wave us off, telling us that they were in a hurry and didn’t have time to get into a religious discussion at that point in time. However, when Elder Proctor would start, people would just stop and stare, transfixed at this crazy man who would gesture wildly, whose speaking was barely intelligible and who wouldn’t listen to their excuses, but just keep going on with his speech like a train wreck. He’d also frequently say, “Perdón mi poor español,” which isn’t even a valid Spanish phrase!

The first two lines of his spiel were “¡Una pregunta! ¿Le gusta leer?” which translates to “One question! Do you like to read?” Then, even if the person said “No,” he’d go on with it. Not only was the accent bad, but he threw in some gems in the speech like, “This book, completely in Spanish. . .” and “this proves that through the ages, more than forty principles were taken from the teachings of Christ.” While I suppose that’s correct, I wonder exactly what forty he was referring to, and I’m pretty sure that he just pulled them out of his own ear, and not from anything sanctioned by the missionary program.

The subtitle of the blog refers to a story one of my companions told me. He was on an exchange once shortly after Elder Proctor had arrived in the mission and hadn’t completely memorized his “le gusta leer” speech yet. He was giving it out to a guy when halfway through he forgot it in Spanish. He was in the middle of the line talking about these 40 principles that got lost over time, so what came out of his mouth went something like “más de cuarenta principios. . .Gone! Lost! D’you understand what I’m saying?!?” At this point he started waving his arms wildly in a futile attempt to communicate with the now thoroughly bemused man on the street, but to no avail.

Great guy, but man, that was an ineffective approach. He was worth a good story or two, though, like when he almost got me killed by driving the wrong way down a one-way street in Murcia, and got pulled over by a cop. We had gone so far on this wrong road that even the cop admitted that the only way we could get out of there was to keep breaking the law and driving down the street a pretty fair distance.

For your amusement, even if you don’t speak Spanish, I’ve uploaded his entire “¿Le gusta leer?” speech. Well, most of it; the tape ran out before he got to the end. You can get the gist of it, though.

If that last post made no sense, I apologize. It was mostly due to tiredness, caffeine, and this crazy medication I’m on for toe-fungus that has steroids in it. Ever since I started using that stuff I’ve been a bit loopy; but don’t worry, I’m off it on Monday. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

I don’t know where this will end up. I just feel I need to type. To start, it’s too hot in here. I believe I shall open a window. Damn. The window’s already open, and I’m still horrendously hot. My brain ain’t feeling so hot, either. I don’t know what it is, but lately, and especially this week, I just haven’t been thinking right. I don’t know why. It just feels fuzzy, somehow. Like I can’t quite grasp reality as it should be and see it for what it is. Most disturbingly is an overwhelming sense of apathy injected into pretty much every corner of my life. In my gut I don’t care about school, work, my church calling, my relations with others; I probably wouldn’t even feel like eating if it weren’t for hunger. I have to work to live, and I have to eat to live, but pretty much everything else is backseated. Is that a word? Backseated? I have a new roommate who always calls me on my little quirks, and sometimes I want to rip his face off and feed it to lions. Lions, lyin’ around. Yep. It’s the mane thing they do. blah! To heck with heck! I heck your heckiest burping bottle of rabies. Randomness. Random your mom! OK, it’s digressing time again for Jeffery, apparently. Like I said, it’s just words. Nothing. Nothing at all. Can a man go down and become a normal individual, or must he conform to societal pressures? What societal pressures? Can things be the way they should? Can I be able to think correctly? Even here, sitting, typing this, my head tilts, my mind slips in and out of awareness of what I’m really typing. Colors fade. Not really. The music fades in and out. What can the music fading mean? Is it just exhaustion? Exhaustion from what? I haven’t been working especially hard at anything this week. In fact, on Monday, I had a very nice time with a Spanish girl who happens to live in this ward and is someone that I haven’t decided yet whether I have a crush on her or not. It’s a tough decision when your heart feels like it’s made of lead because you don’t want it broken. It’s like that C.S. Lewis quote that I have on my Facebook. Page. I’m not even looking at the screen, but I will spellcheck this mess, just so it makes sense, spelling-wise. Not Tori Spelling-wise though. That would be sillier than a garbage truck filled with rabid dogs and Josh. Can you feel it, now? Oniris Cristal! Wow, this is awkward. Spiraling downward, in a twisted barrage of colors. That’s not what it is. Just fog. My mind is fog. I try to break through, but it’s fog. I must concentrate to really have an effect on the world around me. Will I go quietly into the night? Where’s the resolve? Where’s the reason for getting up in the morning? Isn’t the gospel supposed to provide that? It isn’t really at the moment. I don’t know what’s going on, but I feel like it’s completely my fault. I’m ultimately responsible for all my own actions. Why, then do I feel like I’m dragging my entire inert frame through molasses and mud every time I have to do something that requires the least bit of thought and effort? Why does it require every single bit of willpower I have in me just to roll out of bed at the proper time? Indeed, the improper time? I can’t even get out of bed until 9:00 PM. That’s not true at all; I’m out of bed by 10:00, but that’s skipping classes already. Not good, especially since one of the classes is the Class from Hell that is Music 301 starring the one guy from What’s Up, Doc? that has rocks. Bored, indifferent, and looking through fog. Sometimes I’m even in class, taking notes, and I get up afterward and realize I took maybe four or five lines of notes and can’t remember what the damn class was about. Then I take an insanely difficult test. I didn’t buy the books for the course because I cannot afford them. I’m getting deeper into debt and I don’t want to put out my mother anymore than I have by having her pay tution. My job is fortunately simple enough to do without a great deal of cognizance. What the world is going on? Is it just my imagination? Can that be possible? Is it just me being too damn damn lazy, or is it something else that’s going on? Why all this week? Why? Darboe, tell me why! Gegegegegehm! Words! Are ! Like! A Dollar Sign$%! Electric Highway, I fall over, slowly slipping out. But I can’t rest. I can’t rest. too much not being able to rest. Can rest? Dogs can rest? Can the guy who’s in my pants rest? What? Not intermittent, nor referential, just simply a redo button that happens to rest. Rest. Arrested your ghostly form from the underdark and the ghostly ghostlin ghossamer. Sam Cardon. Tyler Moore. Brandon Miur. Amanda Hawks. Wendy Ricks. And Jessica Sharp. Letters, can they mean more than Romans mean them to mean, I mean, they mean what they mean to your mean mean man. Got milk? Forget yourself and to go work! I can’t go to work! MY FOG CAN’T HELP! WHAT?!? Take me away, on electric wings, to find my bears and my dog-thing. Take me to Mario’s house, take me to the control center on the hill, take me to Elder Keller to smash away at the thoughts that I can’t have. Smash them.

Steve just came in and brought me back to reality. I think I’ll wrap this up.

For my Music 389 class (Projects in Media Music), I’ve been composing a couple of tracks that I figured I’d post for all y’all to enjoy. The point of the class is to get MIDI compositions to sound professional enough to show to a client so that he/she will OK the budget for actual live instrumentalists to play the piece. So far I’ve done four works in the class:

M1 Romantic Cue – Done to show we could follow a chord sheet. Most people made their romantic music all strings and piano, or a jazz trio. I tried to go the Barry White route. This is the only piece of the four that was done at my house instead of the studio on campus, and sorry to say, it shows.

Strings – A rendition of the Tetris theme that I actually wrote for a counterpoint assignment back when I was going to BYU-Idaho. For the glory of Mother Russia!

Woodwinds – This sprightly tune is entirely original, although the bassoon line starting it out starts out about a million other songs. Still, it’s a fun little ditty that may make you think of a puppy parade! In fact, I think that’s what I’ll call it: “Puppy Parade!” Yay!

Brass – Theme and Variations on Pitfall II. This one isn’t done yet, but you can hear its progress. I’ll update this post when it is finished. You can get the gist of it with what I have so far, though. Quite majestic, especially toward the end!

That’s all for now. We’ve got a fair number of songs left to go in the semester, so stay tuned!